If it’s hard, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Written by: Angie Noll

Every artist knows the feeling of working really hard on their creation. Then, one day, all the pieces seem to be in place, and it’s practically time to sit back, admire our art and reap the rewards of all this hard work. But you keep touching fresh air. After all that hard work and playing by the rules, nothing manifests and a sense of desperate disappointment and frustration wells up inside of you.

And all you hear is crickets.

After all that hard work you’ve manifested nothing but a sense of desperate disappointment and frustration. Again… Just ask any writer who has ever received those dreaded letters or emails informing them that their manuscript was ‘not accepted for publication at this time.’

Sound familiar? I know I’ve been down that road more times than I can count!

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

Working hard at manifesting

As if the work that goes into creating our pieces of art isn’t hard enough at times, manifesting that goal of seeing your art reap the rewards that you crave often feels like even harder work. You’re taking time out to visualise your success in great detail every day.

You’re making a lot of effort to monitor your thoughts, and you’re working really hard at keeping negative or anxiety filled thoughts out of your mind. And all along, you remain inspired, hopeful and creative.

You trained yourself to think in terms of present tense success and you go through a lot of effort to behave as if your goal is already true for you, without being false or pretentious about it. I am a published author… I am acting on Broadway…. I am an opera singer…. I design award winning quilts…..

And you keep it all up through the stress and demands of your daily life while swatting away at those feelings of impatience and self-doubt that keep creeping up on you.

This is hard, constant, inner work that no one sees, but you know you’re doing it every single day.

There’s no doubt about it. You’re working really hard to manifest your goal, so when it doesn’t materialise your feelings of frustration and anger are perfectly understandable.

So where is it all going wrong?

The reason why we often struggle to manifest our goals is exactly that – we struggle. We work hard. We make an effort.

When we work so hard at manifesting a goal, we land up more often than not, pushing, forcing and demanding. Perhaps not in such obvious ways, but the very nature of our hard work sends out the wrong kind of energy. It’s an energy that screams neediness, desperation and a lack of trust that your creative dreams are indeed on their way.

It’s like digging up the seeds you planted last week to check if they’re growing, instead of simply trusting nature to do its thing.

This kind of energy is the exact opposite of what you’re trying to achieve with your hard work. While actively working toward your goal, your energy actively resists your goal.

Clearly, this is not a recipe for success. You can’t open and close a door at the same time. You have to choose one – and the Universe always listens to our energetic vibrations rather than to our affirmations.

The answer is to soften and surrender

What we have to do is soften. We have to relax the tight grip that we have on our goal, and surrender it. In other words, we must choose to open the door and keep it open, so that the Universe can come in and help us manifest what we desire.

Our job is to create to our best ability and to see to whatever is in our control. We have to do whatever we can, from our side, but it’s the Universe’s job to handle the uncontrollable outcomes.

Yes, we visualise. But we relax while doing it and have some fun, then let it go until next time.

Yes, we say our affirmations, but they become such a natural part of out thought process, that we don’t “do” them anymore, we “become” them.

Yes, we live as if the goal is already true for us, but we don’t force it. We just are it. Inside of ourselves, initially, until we become it on the outside as well.

So the difference isn’t so much in what we do or don’t do in terms of manifesting our goals. The difference is in the energetic intent that we do them with.

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